Kompagnon Fellowship
The annual Kompagnon Fellowship is awarded jointly by Berlinale Talents and the Berlinale programme sections. In 2024, it was open to screenwriters and directors based in Germany who were selected for the last edition of Perspektive Deutsches Kino or participated in the current edition of the Script Station, Doc Station or Short Form Station. Additionally producers attending the latest edition of the Talent Project Market can apply.
The fellowship provides a stipend to develop a screenplay or project, comprising €5,000. Based on the filmmaker’s or producer's individual needs, additional €3,000 can be spent to support and strengthen the fellow's artistic or entrepreneurial signature - whether through coaching, mentoring, or personal consultancy.
The Kompagnon Fellowship is supported by the German Federal Film Board (FFA).
Vladimir Beck
The Shore
Berlinale Talents Script Station 2024
Jury Statement:
Imagine living in a country where you have to swear your children never to tell anyone who their mother is. Because there are two loving fathers! Inspired by a true story, the filmmaker tells in poetic but crystal-clear words a story of two men who have to hide not only their relationship, but also their foster children. They are not allowed to adopt in Russia, and when their secret is revealed and they flee to the promise of Germany, they only find out that there is no safe haven here either.
The writer-director not only succeeds in giving a face and a voice to thousands of invisible families like this one, he also creates the story of an ordeal between systems, of a family and a couple who find and lose each other, with whom we deeply sympathise and for whom we wish nothing less than happiness at last.
Tizian Stromp Zargari
Traversée
Perspektive Deutsches Kino 2023
Jury Statement:
This film is a "road movie" of the kind we see far too rarely. A documentary journey to the East, across Europe, first through France and Germany, then through Kosovo, Greece and Kurdistan to the Iranian border in Iraq.
The author reminds us that the word "Europe" in Greek is derived from "the one with the wide view". This wide view, it turns out, is both deeply personal and pan-European, both critical and hopeful; with a keen eye for solidarity, but also for injustice and, above all, for seeing people not only as they are, but also as they want to be seen.
The project unfolds a story of displaced people, precarious labour and marginality. And perhaps precisely the broader and more inclusive idea of Europe that we so urgently need today.
We want to encourage the author's gaze to "get lost", as he himself put it, in a genre that is all too often undermined by a perceived need for simple narratives. Instead, his film offers something much more valuable: a voice that is too rarely heard, finding both poetry and politics in everyday scenes.
